Grit Lab Report

Hi Martina,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were universalism, security, and power.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was extraversion.

You said your top three talents were social, kinesthetic, and musical.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you were not sure yet about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to be fit .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Loose weight .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said It will make me healthier .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Have dinner plans with people .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When the alarm turns on then I need to put on workout clothes .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in School .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Sad when receiving critical feedback, and Sad when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being recruiting and classes .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel happy .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

I really loved the part in which we talked about journey and destination
Curiosity conversation
Goal = desired future state
Giving advice benefits the advisor
Learned that allostatic load is bad
Dopamine is related to motivation
Having a mentor/actively seeking for one is extremely important
Self transcendence is when you have a top level goal that has the purpose behind ourselves

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Hannah Zhao
Martina, you are such a genuine person and your warmth makes everyone feel like they’re instantly your friend. You’re fun to talk to and always light up the room with your smile. I loved talking with you after class, and you’re such a cool DJ! Next year's Discovery project: modeling??! I wish you all the best girlie! 💜 The best part of your Discovery Project was how you always took the opportunity to play in front of people! I admire your confidence and it looked like so much fun. I didn’t realize how complicated DJing was, and I’m impressed that you’ve been at it for a while! I look forward to hearing more from you, DJ Martina. DJ Mar?
Justin Han
Hi Martina! It has been so much fun taking Grit Lab with you this past semester. I loved having the opportunity to chat and work with you and find your personality, positivity, and contagious energy admirable. Especially as the only non-senior in the group, you held your ground well and never let any barriers form between us. Even when many of us were extremely tired from a long day, I could always depend on you to provide some sunshine within our group with your vibrant smile and antics. This type of positivity is hard to come across, so thank you for providing our group with that. Your passion project is everything I had hoped to accomplish in mine. I really enjoyed learning more about DJing and thought that the teachings you had for the class was insightful. There were a few things that I also learned that I did not know about even as a casual DJ myself. I'm a bit bummed you couldn't perform a set for us in class, but it seems like you found something you can destress with and even find a community with.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.